Re: Qin crossbow in TFT?

[PvK <pvk@oz.net>]

It's been statted up in GURPS China, which you can backwards-convert to TFT (I'll go give it a stab shortly and post again).

It fires faster than a bow can be fired until the magazine is empty, but doesn't do much damage, is heavy, and has a fairly small magazine that takes longer to reload, so I'm not sure that effective rate of fire in a long-term battle would be better than a fast bow - I tend to think it would not be. The advantage would be for short-term bursts, probably at short range because it's not that powerful. So a shock weapon for right as you meet the enemy, that's best if your enemy doesn't have a lot of armor.

I have seen larger versions too that are wheeled, which would be good as a missile engine for a fortification, because you could reload while behind cover and so get many shots off in the time exposed.

Is there any evidence that entire large infantry units were equipped with repeating crossbows? They seem pretty labor-intensive and low-powered to try to have a whole lot of them. The low-power aspect makes it pretty clear to me that even if you did have such a unit, it would be at a big disadvantage to good horse archers with strong bows, because they have mobility and can choose a range where their arrows are effective and the crossbows are not. I think the repeating crossbows would only have an advantage if the terrain/situation allowed a shorter-range engagement, and maybe not even then if the bolts were not all that powerful and the time to reload a magazine cut the overall rate of fire down.

PvK